


I'll keep you like an oath

by marsellia_rose



Series: The world is just a teller and we are wearing black masks [6]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Angst, Fake AH Crew, Gen, Immortal Fake AH Crew, Jack-Centric, Multi, No Proofreading We Die Like Men, Pre-Fake AH Crew, The Roosters, you'll finally get to meet them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 09:03:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11620332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marsellia_rose/pseuds/marsellia_rose
Summary: He was the morally sound one.That’s what people said about him. Jack Patillo. The pilot. He was morally sound, the gangster with a conscious. Only there to keep his boys safe.But it was like that for a reason. Everything in his life had molded and prepared him to be like that.Jack's backstory for Immortal Fake AH Crew au.





	I'll keep you like an oath

**Author's Note:**

> Only two more left after this one. Title from Fall Out Boy's Uma Thurman.
> 
> Not gonna lie, this one's my favorite since Jeremy's.

He was the morally sound one.

That’s what people said about him. Jack Patillo. The pilot. He was morally sound, the gangster with a conscious. Only there to keep his boys safe.

It was true, in a way. The illegal activities didn’t bother him, but he liked their crew specifically because there were boundaries- they didn’t just kill whoever with no consideration. He’d always cared more about morals than the law.

It’s what had gotten him in trouble in the first place. 

He was a pilot. Joined up with the military straight out of high school, a fresh 18 year-old with wide-eyed patriotism and a desire to do what was right. Flew the Titans, for special ops. He flew them in, they did what they had to, he flew them out. It was easy. Not terribly rewarding, but he wasn’t in it for the reward.

He was in it to do the right thing. 

Eventually they contracted him out. He was a brilliant pilot, or so they said, and the Air Force needed support.

They made him actually take part in the action. Fly bombers in. Drop bombs himself. 

It wasn’t what he had signed up for, but he was still one of the good guys, so it was okay. 

He met a guy, somewhere along the line. One of the Rangers, several years his senior. Ramsey. Told him to get out now, before his conscious started to catch up with him. He didn’t think anything of it, not ‘til a few years later.

He was young, and hopeful. Thought serving his country and being made to do the wrong thing were mutually exclusive ideas. He never questioned orders because he never assumed they’d make him do something against his conscious. 

Years later, he would tell this to Joel, and Joel would tell him that the whole world was set down a path of mutually assured destruction, and that he never was going to make a difference or do the right thing. He didn’t believe that, either, but it made more sense than his original ideals.

But eventually, he did get an order that made him pause. Drop a bomb in the middle of a wedding. Granted, the man being married was a suspected associate, and it was rumored that the man they were after would be there.

But they had no real evidence. What they did have evidence of was the women and children who would be at that wedding, the hundreds of causalities that would occur over the surrounding marketplace. 

They made him drop the bomb anyway.

He wanted to quit. He really did. But he kept justifying it to himself. And the next one. And the one after that. On, and on, until he didn’t even know who he was anymore.

Until he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror anymore.

Eventually he got sloppy. His conscious distracted him, and his plane got hit by anti-aircraft missiles. 

He fully expected that to be the end of it.

Instead, he woke up from the explosion and walked away. He didn’t know how, but it hadn’t killed him. So he slowly but surely made his way back to base, and reported that his plane had gone down.

It happened a few more times before he realized that it wasn’t that the crashes weren’t killing him.

They were. He just couldn’t stay dead. 

Eventually he used one of those deaths as an out. The military would never let him leave, so he let them report him as KIA instead. 

He escaped back to America, unsure of where to go or how to start over.

And he did want to.

But he was haunted by what he’d done. He’d done terrible things, and tried to justify them to himself by saying he was ordered to. But he’d still done them. He was haunted by nameless, faceless spirits, potential innocents that he’d killed. 

He didn’t know who he was anymore. It felt like everything that made him who he was had been stripped away, and he was left with this corrupted stranger.

He moved around a lot, never being sure of where to go next. Eventually, he ended up in Los Santos.

He had always liked living in the city. The quiet made him nervous. And while a newer gang had just taken the city by storm- The Roosters, they were calling themselves- living on the edge of the city was still safer than most of the places he’d lived before. 

He lived there for a year before the hurricane that was Joel crashed into his life. 

Joel Heyman was a force unto himself, Jack’s best friend, and the man who would eventually get Jack killed. 

And they met when Joel barged into his house, bleeding profusely from his right shoulder and laughing maniacally. 

Basically, Joel inserted himself into Jack’s life by demanding first aid and then passing out on his couch. Realistically, he was a terrible gangster. 

But Jack had always done better when he had someone to mother, and he still didn’t know who he was, so he took care of Joel. Patched him up, made sure he was alright, and let him stay in his house for a couple of days while he waited for the Roosters to take care of whatever mess he’d gotten himself into. 

They did come, eventually. And they were obviously suspicious of Jack, which made him at least understand how they managed to be somewhat successful as gangsters- though he later learned that his initial guess of their success coming from dumb luck was in fact mostly accurate- but they eventually warmed up to him as they realized that he’d not only taken care of Joel the past couple of days instead of turning him in, but also put up with his neurotic rambling enough to somehow make friends with him. 

They kept tabs on Jack, then. Didn’t really bother him, and made sure no one else did, either.

He and Joel went out for drinks sometimes. 

He still didn’t really know who he was or what he was doing with his life, but at least now he wasn’t so lonely.

And slowly but surely he became friends with the others, too. Burnie and Matt, who ran the gang together. Burnie was their front man, the face of the Roosters, while Matt was a tech genius, running everything behind the scenes so it went as smoothly as possible. 

Gus was their connections guy, even as he hated and insulted his way through the city. He offended more people than not, and yet when push came to shove- or when the guns came out- he generally could get what they needed from people.

Geoffrey Ramsey- the same Ramsey from when he was younger, and that had worked in his favor when they’d first met him, and Ramsey had said “I think I know this dude?”- was a weapons expert and strategist. His time in the military made him a good shot and a quick learner for new guns, and he as fairly good at figuring out what to do in a pinch. 

And then there was Joel. Joel had an explosive personality and the weapons to match. He was an all-around lunatic, their element of surprise in most attacks. He was also a financial genius, making sure that they were actually making money in their heists. 

They were good, but not great, and by all accounts they shouldn’t have been successful as a gang.

But somehow, they were. 

Jack didn’t really have anything to do with their gang, though. He hung out with Joel, and sometimes one of the others tagged along. He slowly ended up becoming good friends with Geoff- they bonded over their time in the military- and while he felt a bit lost and unsure whenever they left, he was finally starting to live a little. 

And life sort of continued like that for a while, until Joel died.

It wasn’t the first time, but Jack didn’t know that. What he did know was that the Roosters barged into his house with a clearly dead Joel and told him they needed to stay there for an hour or so. 

Jack had panicked, obviously, but Geoff had tried to keep him calm, and after about 40 minutes Joel woke up.

He shouldn’t have been able to wake up. He’d had a bullet lodged in his skull. 

That’s when Jack learned that they were immortal, too. Well, at least Burnie, Gus, Geoff, and Joel were. Matt hadn’t had a chance to die yet, and while they assumed he would be, they didn’t really want to test it.

And wasn’t that the craziest thing. They had all found each other, and ended up being immortal. None of them knew why. They just were. 

Well. Now Jack knew how they were so successful. They literally had the cards stacked in their favor.

In return for them sharing this with him, he told them about how he was immortal, too. About having a couple of plane crashes before realizing it. 

He still didn’t share everything he had done with them, but he shared how he ended up here. 

He shared enough.

They seemed to like him better for it. 

Geoff and Joel came around, often enough. Burnie and Gus and Matt came around slightly less often. It was all fine. His life had resumed, even if he hadn’t meant for it to.

It continued like that for a couple of years, and probably would have continued like that forever, if not for a collection of things, all leading up to The Incident. 

And that really was what brought the Roosters down. All the little things, stacking up and stacking up, finally leading to the one big thing.

Jack knew better than to ask about it- to talk about it- in front of any of them. 

After what had happened, they were all a little broken. 

Leading up to that, it was only Joel that was broken. Joel, so neurotic and unsure, who slowly realized that being immortal meant he would literally never die.

It meant he was stuck here forever.

That got to him, eventually. 

He wanted to die for real. Maybe not now, but eventually, and if it had to be now he’d take it.

It was something that grew inside of him, something that they didn’t realize was occurring. It was the slow and seemingly accidental deaths, that grew and grew into him asking them. 

And then it was a whole thing. Burnie and Geoff dealt with it, mostly, but Jack helped as best he could, and when it all finally calmed down it was Jack who Joel went to go stay with. 

‘Cause Joel- Joel wanted them to kill him. For real. None of them had killed each other yet, and he’d gotten it into his head the maybe if they did, it’d be permanent. 

It wasn’t. But he wanted to keep trying, and trying, and trying. 

And so Burnie and Geoff had to intervene, had to make sure he was going to be alright, had to figure out how to go from there. 

He wasn’t alright, not really, but he was getting better, and that’s all they could ask. 

Jack kept tabs on him, later in life, after they’d all broken apart and drifted away. He wandered for some time, and Jack worried, but eventually he ended up in Dallas, with a young- and seemingly immortal- man named Adam, and after that, Joel seemed to finally calm down. He died a lot less, then, and Jack finally felt he could stop worrying. 

But for now…for now everything was broken. The Roosters were gone, faded away, scattered. They all moved on, moved out of the city. They didn’t want to be reminded of what had happened here.

Except Geoff. 

Geoff just kept coming around. He and Jack grew closer- became better friends.

And eventually Geoff told him the truth. Told him that he wasn’t done with the criminal life yet- that he wanted to try and start a new group, find others like them.

Asked him if he was in.

And Jack thought about it. Really thought about it- about how long he’d spent trying to atone for what he’d done, how long he’d spent trying to take the moral high ground, trying to figure out where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to be doing.

And for once, it felt like he was finally in the right place. It felt like he finally knew what he was supposed to do.

How could he say no to that?

**Author's Note:**

> Next up: Ray, the Red Assassin.


End file.
